Dawood aide Muthappa Rai deported from UAE

After two years of trying, the Bangalore police managed to get Muthappa Rai (48), an aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, deported from Dubai.

Rai was deported by the UAE under the extradition treaty that came into effect in 1999.

A Bangalore police team led by Deputy Commissioner of Police Ravindra Prasad brought back Rai to Delhi on Wednesday evening, where he was immediately taken to the CBI headquarters for investigation.

Rai would be brought to Bangalore, where he is an accused in the murder of prominent Bangalore builder Subbaraju in January last year.

Bangalore police sources said that Rai controlled several rackets in Karnataka through his henchmen, who kept in touch with him by cell phone.

Although Rai moved to Dubai five years ago, allegedly at the behest of his cousin Sharad Shetty -- a close confidante of Dawood -- the Bangalore police began to hunt for Rai in earnest after the murder of Subbaraju.

Cell phones dropped by the assassins, who gunned down the builder and fled, registered numbers that led the police to believe that the kill was carried out at Rai's command.

The sources said that Subbaraju had angered Rai by starting construction on a disputed piece of land in Cunningham Road.

After the Subbaraju killing, Rai fled to South Africa, where he was believed to have got involved with the manufacturing of fake pharmaceutical products, the sources said.

They said the Dubai immigration authorities picked up Rai, when he had come to visit his wife and two daughters.

The Bangalore police then approached the UAE government for extraditing Rai, and also moved the Interpol wing of the CBI to put pressure on the UAE authorities.

Under pressure the UAE authorities decided to deport Rai, as deportation involves a shorter, simpler procedure than extradition.

This was done at the behest of the Indian embassy in UAE, the sources said.

Bangalore Police Commissioner H T Sangliana told rediff.com: "I hope Indian ambassador (to UAE) K C Singh, who helped us greatly in this matter, will extend the same co-operation in helping us track down and capture the underworld kingpin, Tanveer, who is in one of the Gulf countries."

Nearly 20 cases are pending against Rai in Mangalore, Bangalore, Udupi and Mysore, apart from his involvement in Subbaraju murder.

This is only the second time that Rai is in the custody of the Indian police.

The first time he was captured in a dramatic raid on his wife's estate in Kodagu district nine years ago.

At that time, a posse of 20 policemen disguised themselves as construction workers hopped on to a truck transporting mud and ambushed Rai on the porch of the estate house.

Rai originally was a bank employee. But he was dismissed from service, and began running a small hotel in Bangalore's Brigade Road.

It was during his stint as an hotelier that he came in contact with Dawood Ibrahim, who was looking to move base to Bangalore.

Rai became the lynchpin of the Dawood gang in Bangalore and his first major strike was the killing of another underworld don M P Jayaraj. He quickly followed it up with the killing of gangster Oil Kumar

The elimination of these two men made Rai the virtual head of the Bangalore underworld.